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There’s this thing that men, women and everyone do where they like to make unsolicited comments on your personal appearance. I was prey to this at an early age. While my sister had nicknames like Pretzel and Sticks, my relatives thought to cleverly offset these with my nicknames of Pork Chop and Garfield. Then somehow they are genuinely surprised that I had a weird relationship with food and had a brief love, hate, vomit affair with an eating disorder in my mid 20s.

In much the same way, it’s common for men in the club to pass judgement on our appearance. “It’s just so nice to see a woman with real curves these days.” Note to such men, no matter how you phrase it, few Australian women like to be told they have put on weight, are curvy, or voluptuous. Down here on lonely island we run behind the booty loving times of the USA and UK. It’s hard to keep up with the rest of the world when you’re clutching onto a snack pack of celery sticks, sprinting on minimal calories with bow legs cause you’re trying to maintain your box gap at a pace.

Back in the day when I would allow the men to speak their minds, I’d have bets placed on what the status of my pubic hair would be. Bald like a prepubescent girl? Landing strip? Untrimmed? Some creative topiary perhaps? The latter would always be the witticism of the group imbecile with a laugh like the stupid hyena from The Lion King. Not knowing the term “topiary” it would usually be expressed more along the lines of, “Yeah! I bet fifty bucks she has her bush cut into the shape of a fucking rooster or something. Cock on ‘er box! LOL. Like on Edward Scissorhands. ROFL. Edward VAGINAhands. LOL. Why was that faggot crying if he got to trim bushes all the time?? (more LOLing and ROFLing)” Yes, yes. We get it dickhead. Excellent use of a double entendre “bushes”. Clever. This is what we, as dancers deal with on a regular basis. Some girls are so professional that they can even make themselves giggle with conviction. I cannot.

To turn the tables, I’d like to address the not so recent trend of the fluffy beard. The beard so big, long, puffy and lustrous that it has the consistency of freshly spun fairy floss at a state fair. Untrimmed. Requiring the launch of beard oil products into the Anglo world. Caressing the space around it as it drifts in the breeze, seemingly with a body and mind of its own. Enjoying the tickling sensation of sweat gathering at the tip of the tuft, dripping to the ground below. Every time I see one, I can only think of a hairy armpit in my face at a festival, and a vagina on someone’s face. An untrimmed, 1980’s vagina coat.

Before I ever kissed someone with a big, bushy beard, I’d always imagined what that would feel like. Then I did kiss someone with a big, bushy beard and I found that I’d imagined with great accuracy, how gross it would be. The beard part. Not the mouth, lips, tongue part. Just the fluffy face pubes, like a million flies on my face, grazing their little wings just inside my nostrils. The man was beautiful, gentle charisma, funny as fuck, was my hero with a perfect nose, blue eyes bursting like sunbeams, sweetest soul and built like a tattoo covered giant in a cowboy hat…with a vagina face. I’d like to say that I’m patiently waiting for the trend to shrivel up and die, as patiently as a mother who hopes it’s just a craze as she observes her 13 year old son has just started smoking weed and listening to limp bizkit…. But I’m not. Patient that is. I’m so bloody over it. I am a single woman dealing with the stark reality that 95% of men fall into at least one of the following categories: boring, couldn’t handle a dinner party with me and my friends, can’t handle my job even though they say they have “no judgement”, have beards, have dad bods. Seeing a potentially cute face trying to claw it’s way to stardom through the obstructive curtains of a fluffy beard is such a waste. Makes me feel like a guy at a peep show who’s gold coins never up the game. In so many cases I can see the cute eyes poking out over the puff of vagina face, the suggestion of plump kissable lips, a cheeky smile (dimples perhaps???), but unlike many women considering a labiaplasty, the lips of the man never quite protrude from the bush with 100% transparency out into the open air.

Every time I notice myself having these hateful thoughts, maliciously imagining myself taking to this or that face with a can of shaving cream and a razor, I feel slightly ashamed. I’m embarrassed because years later, I have discovered common ground between myself and the hyena from the Lion King pissing his pants laughing over the Cock on a Box. Schlepping my way around judging this and that, minus laughter, add forlorn whimper. Fingers crossed it’s only a few months before you all look back at your beards in photographs and wonder “What was I thinking? My strong jawline is hidden. My perfect cheekbones…hidden. My eyes….look promising but overshadowed by the ramshackle garden of pubes on my face.”

This is my Christmas wish. That all beards be reduced to rough stubble or shaved entirely. It’s shallow and selfish I know. But I can’t help it.

I found a piece of paper scrawled over with the brain zap of my 19 year old self falling in love for the first time. The first part was romantic as all hell. The usual treacle drenched musings of a teen in love. The last part made me realise that I’ve lost something important.

The first time I read it, the words sounded like someone else’s. Reading over it again I recalled those feeling from over 16 years ago. Sharp and hazy at the same time. I became aware that I held my breath as I read. I’ve always found the process of falling in love terrifying. But that very first time… I can feel that memory. Eyes open. Cheeks flushed by the cold, fast air against my face as we fell into the abyss together. Reckless. With a faith that I don’t think I ever had before or since. And today I am doing my own head in because I realize that I haven’t let go of all that pain, still harboring sadness from the actions of a boy who didn’t know what he was doing any more than I did.

It’s times like this I wonder how much damage I’m doing to myself walking into the doors at work? How many encounters can this little heart take? One after the other, with men who just by being who they are, no intent or malice, provide countless exhibits in the case against faith.

We almost got married. I was 19. I still have my wedding ring somewhere. We eloped to Rome, but I bailed 3 days before the wedding. I didn’t want to have that day without my family there. It didn’t feel right. I remember when I told him, we were sitting in the hot sun together, sweat running down the back of my calves as our legs dangled in unison over the stone blocks of ancient ruins in a park near the Colosseum. All he said was, “I feel like someone just cancelled Christmas.” His face was upturned and he squinted into the sun, before lowering his gaze to stare at the ground and take my clammy little hand in his. He was adorable. He loved me so very much.

Turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made.

My first love chose liquor and lies in the end. Let me travel 32 hours back to Australia alone, to have the jelly bean we made on the bottom bunk of a hostel bed in Dublin, vacuumed out of my uterus. Abortion was illegal in Ireland in January 2001. I had no option but to come home. He stayed over there to drink himself into oblivion, and didn’t come back until one year later when I said I knew he’d been banging someone else and that it was over between he and I. That slap in the face. It’s the slap in the face that reminds someone that they have something to lose. Sometimes too late.

Wasn’t too late for him. No way. I was still brimming with faith. I took him back, as you do. It didn’t work out, as it doesn’t. Took another 2 years to drown. I never long for, or mourn the 14 year old child I could have had. I never long for, or mourn the relationship I had with him. But I long for, and mourn that faith. I don’t know how to get it back. I don’t know who is deserving of it or if I’ll ever find them. I still love that guy who saw it last. We are friends to this day, and I will always, always love him because he did the best he could, he never laid a hand on me, and he is a good person worth forgiving. We were young. We didn’t know any better. But somehow I knew this…

“I am terrified that we will sooner or later turn from each other and I will never be able to have back, or to give again, exactly what he has of me now.”

“Despite the Global Financial Crisis, Lolita, Tazo and Billie still know how to have a good time.” Circa 2008.

It’s not all 50 and 100 dollar bills cascading their way through the air and into our garter belts. It’s hard to keep your spirits up and make money when the club is dead. The men get swamped by girls, one after the other, after the other. The abundance of choice can turn a regular customer into an absolute cunstomer, adopting the distinctive smarmy arrogance of a man who can have anyone he likes. He can’t. Otherwise he wouldn’t be sitting in a strip club alone on a Tuesday being a basic dick.

Up against these odds it’s easy for us girls to become bitter, nasty, man hating, impatient, exasperated harpies. However, if you’re working at the right club, with the right people, non-profit organization nights don’t have to be a total drainer.

DRESS UPS IN THE LOCKER ROOM FIX EVERYTHING.

In an unfortunate turn of events over the last few years, the frequency of slow nights has increased and all the club’s costumes have been flogged by financially destitute strippers aka bitches who don’t know how to handle their money and/or love to steal stuff. Nowadays we prefer to pool our resources at the end of a night, make a run for someone’s house and raid the costume box to the sweet sounds of Hall and Oates.

I was recently reminded of a glamorous stripper girl I worked with a couple of years ago. She was sweet as sugar and nice to talk to, until she started talking smack about my best mate. But that didn’t come to pass until a long time after her labiaplasty.

She had a voice like the gravel rubbing itself up and down the back of your throat after a hard night on the ciggies, and a dry sense of humor that suited her voice perfectly. She would arrive at work without makeup dressed in a hoody and pink velour tracksuit pants, looking like a day-to-day girl. Then the 2 hour transformation would take place….

Her falsies were in the top 5 biggest I’d ever seen. I’m talking about eyelashes…. She wore an excess of glitter and so many sequins and rhinoplasties, I mean rhinestones, that I felt absolute wonderment that such a stunning toothpick of a girl could manage all that extra weight without teetering over in the super tall sparkly platform stilettos that she wore around the club. She always wore white and shined bright like any diamonte being sold as a genuine Swarovski that I’ve ever seen. She was the sort of girl who’s favourite quote would be Marilyn Monroe’s “If he can’t handle me at my worst, then he doesn’t deserve me at my best.” Ugh. Pretty well suited to the kind of guy who would have “No woman no cry” as his life motto.

She did a little military drummer girl show that I actually really enjoyed. She was excellent at beating her own drum to the rhythm of somebody else’s song. There was something so sweetly aggressive about her performance in this particular Halloween outfit. As though she were really trying to bang it out there and show everyone that she didn’t give two fucks about anything except owning who she was and being a loud and proud stripper in a super hot fictitious civilian services costume. Here to fictitiously service you civilians and service you good. In a dancy way. I never saw that girl jump the gap between the two sex industries. And it is a HUGE gap for most girls to jump. But that’s a whole other chapter in itself.

Some girls dance like the devil in the pale spotlight so that they can travel. This girl liked to travel too. Thailand was her Number One, ichiban daisukidesu destination. Every time she returned she was loaded with goodies. One time at band camp, a plastic surgeon in Australia refused to perform the super size me, level up! augmentation she was craving so she was forced to take a tropical hospital vacay in trusty Thailand. She returned with tits so enormous that from behind she appeared to be a bronzed prepubescent girl dressed up in her mum’s heels holding basketballs close to her chest so that they bulged beyond her snowy egret frame, creating the silhouette of a fantasy cartoon of any Comicon attendee.

She told me in conversation that she had also had her labia trimmed and that it was the most painful thing she had ever experienced, and that the doctor gave her the option to keep the wings of her vagina in a little jar of solution. I was stunned. I wasn’t even offered my wisdom teeth when I got those fuckers hoisted out of my face. No one ever offered me the left over pieces of myself! Well, they offered them to her. And she graciously accepted her labia in a little plastic jar. Like the ones you pee into for a urine sample. The one with the yellow lid.

Forever more when I think of her, I will imagine her going home after the club closes at 7.30am and chucking her work bag on her bed with the frilly pink and white covers. I will imagine her peeling off her Top of the Charts lashes and beginning to ritualistically remove all signs of the night. Gently cleansing her body and face, soaking her white and tan-stained clothes in a bucket by the shower for the night. Going into her bedroom and getting down on her hands and knees to reach into the back left hand side of her wardrobe retrieving an old shoe box from the floor. Gently unfolding the tissue paper wrapped around her jar of vagina and holding the jar in her hands for just a few moments before she shakes it up a little. And as the glitter softly falls around the snow globe encasing the angel’s wings she used to have, she sits, counting her money.